F2014.2 Team 7
Venture Team Welcome to Wine racks for Wishes! We are a team of JMU students looking to come up with an entrepreneurial venture to come up with a genuine product that customers will enjoy. Our team is made up of Kasey Ball, Kyle English, and Skyler Pierre. Kasey was able to secure the resources necessary to make the racks, Kyle was able to assemble the racks, and Skyler was able to stain and finish the racks to make sure they were ready for the customers. Innovation Questionstorming' To come up with a product to sell to our customers, we asked ourselves a few different questions: · “What if there was a way to keep your key and ID in a safe place while working out at the gym?” · “What if there was a way to take the waste from a company and turn it into a product we could sell?” The first question led us to look into the creation of a card and key holder that attached to a water bottle. When we surveyed the market, we found that there was a company that already made something like that. We then decided to make a clip that could attach to the waist band of athletic shorts or yoga pants. The second question led us to turning old pallets into wine racks, since we were able to find someone that had leftover wine racks that we could use to sell as our product. '''Big Idea Hypothesis' For avid drinkers of wine who are looking for a way to show off the select wines they have, The Wine Racks for Wishes company makes wine racks that allow customers to display their wine bottles on their wall with recycled, versus your standard wine rack that uses extra materials. Our solution takes the waste from other companies and using it to turn it into a final product. Key Innovations One of the key innovations that really helped us with selling our racks was the fact that the racks were made from old pallets. When we told people about the m aterials we used and that we made them ourselves, people were excited to purchase something that was handmade. One of the things that helped differentiate our product is the fact that we offered customization options so people could choose what size of rack they wanted, what color of stain they wanted, and whether or not they got chalkboard paint on the rack or not. Early Adopters A lot of our early adopters were close family members and close friends. The main reason for this is because they loved the fact that they could purchase something that we made by hand. Almost every person we mentioned it to wanted one regardless of price. Resources Our main resources were pallets. After we used the wine racks we were able to obtain from the family of one of our group members, we went around to local businesses to ask for pallets that we could use as well. Business Model Wine Rack VIP Progression Moving Forward Taking a look at everything we have done, a few of the lessons we have learned are that handmade goods should be sold for hand-made prices. We could have made more if we had bumped up the price of the racks we sold. It would have also helped if we had other people to help us with the construction of the racks, just due to the fact that it is a very long and pain-staking process. Meet the Team